Vehicles designed for hauling and transporting items come with various sides, gates and bed designs in order to facilitate loading and unloading of the vehicle, while making transport of the loads safe and efficient.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,310 describes a lift for a truck gate, wherein the truck gate or side gate is hinged and affixed to the side or bottom of the truck. The gates pivot downwardly and outwardly or inwardly and upwardly and the lift facilitates this movement of the side gate, so that the user is not hurt or the cargo damaged. This lift must be installed as a permanent fixture on each truck.
This lift in the '310 patent is not designed, however, for side gates that are designed to be physically removed from the truck, such as so in a stake bed truck where a gate having downwardly pointing stakes is designed to mate with the stake holders or stake pockets on the sides of the trucks. Specifically, as these gates are removed and attached again to the sides of the trucks, the stake holders and/or stake pockets and stakes become deformed, warped or otherwise damaged.
As the gates are forced into the stake holders multiple times, it becomes difficult to pull the side gates out of the stake holders, in order to load and/or remove cargo. Often times a forklift must be employed for assistance. Workers loading and unloading cargo must spend a great deal of time and energy removing the side gates before their work can begin, not to mention injuring their backs, legs and arms in the process. Conventional methods of removing these gates result in a loss of manpower and money, as jobs are held up while workers remove gates and deal with injuries, along with costs to the business in health care coverage and downtime.
It would be ideal if a gate removal system and corresponding storage system were developed that easily allows for the side gates to be removed by utilizing the concept of leverage. It would also be ideal if the gate removal system or assembly, along with the gates, had a simple, straightforward and portable storage system.